When the Internet broke out of its roots in academia and became popular among consumers, the primary model of interaction between devices was server-client, in which information is concentrated in a centralized source (the server) and generally maintained by a single entity. Today, peer-to-peer (“P2P”) interaction exceeds client-server interaction in terms of the overall volume of broadband Internet traffic. In a P2P network, each device becomes a source of information for all other devices on the network. Thus, when an owner of a device on a P2P network changes (e.g., deletes files or add files) the information that the device shares, the owner effectively changes the total shared repository of information on the P2P network. Consequently, information available on P2P networks tends to be dynamic in nature.
When peers in a P2P network “browse” one another's content, they gather and store metadata regarding the files stored in their respective repositories. Thus, even if device A and device B are not currently connected, device A may have a list of all of the files that are stored on, and shared by, device B by virtue of the fact that device A may have previously collected the relevant metadata from device B.
One possible topology for a P2P network is a mesh topology, in which each peer device relays data for the network, and all peers cooperate in the distribution of data in the network. One type of mesh network that can be used in the P2P context is a wireless mesh network, in which a number of wireless devices, such as mobile phones, interact with one another as peers in a mesh topology.